A crop! The first of the strawberries…

Having been away on holiday for a week, my first instinct on getting home was to get down to the allotment to check that everything was in order. The chard’s looking fantastic, the tomatoes and runner beans less so, and something’s been nibbling the cabbages again, which is all roughly what I was expecting.

The best news is that there was also a crop to harvest: Jenny and I have now enjoyed the first of our strawberries fresh from the allotment!

Curiously, the harvest came from one of the late variety plants (a Symphony); so much for staggering the picking season.

The crop was admittedly small, but the single strawberry harvested was ripe, fresh, crisp, and juicy, and whetted the appetite nicely.

The first strawberry

Shame there weren’t any more: those still on the plants (and there are plenty, despite the mouse-damage we’ve suffered in recent weeks) are a pale white, looking a long way off being ready to pick.

We could have had our first strawberry several weeks ago. Then, unfortunately, we spent so long deciding who should get to eat it that something came along and ate it, which is the main reason I decided to grab this one at the earliest opportunity.

Apologies to Carl and Karen for not waiting for them (unless, of course, you’ve been guzzling strawberries from the plot all week in our absence).